


makes three

by Xmarksthespot



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adoption, Babies, M/M, this is not how the adoption process works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-18 00:41:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3549653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xmarksthespot/pseuds/Xmarksthespot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas usually isn’t a picky person. He’ll drink coffee however it’s served to him because it doesn’t matter as long as it’s caffeinated, and really, toppings and condiments don’t matter either so long as there’s cheese and a beef patty on a burger. </p><p>And yet with one look at the adorable, little baby on the screen, Cas doesn’t even bat an eyelid before he says, “No.”</p><p>“God dammit, Cas, we’re adopting a baby, not shopping for bras.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	makes three

Cas usually isn’t a picky person. He’ll drink coffee however it’s served to him because it doesn’t matter as long as it’s caffeinated, and really, toppings and condiments don’t matter either so long as there’s cheese and a beef patty on a burger. If they’re low on cash and bunking in a small motel space, he’ll sleep on the floor willingly so that Sam and Dean can somehow squeeze on the Queen. Dean once tried to convince him that he’d fit somewhere on the mattress too, and he didn’t complain about that particularly tight fit either, but the brothers did, and so they take turns now whenever they have to salvage.

Of course, while it took Dean a hell lot of time to realize it, Cas accepts him in whatever form the hunter’s in, broken or pieced together like a jig saw puzzle, human, demon, and the one time that no one will _ever_ talk about, when he was in the body of a woman. Hell, Cas’ll watch Sam’s weird ass documentaries to Charlie’s nerdy movies to Kevin’s cartoons.

And yet with one look at the adorable, little baby on the screen, Cas doesn’t even bat an eyelid before he says, “No.”

“God dammit, Cas, we’re adopting a baby, not shopping for bras.”

* * *

It takes Dean Winchester many years to cope with reality and come to a final conclusion that while there will always be monsters literally hiding under beds or behind the closet doors, there will also be hunters, hunting things, saving people, hopefully not as screwed as they had been in the family business. In that time, his and Sam’s outside adventures diminished slowly, spending some of their years helping Kevin integrate back into society, and helping Sammy choose a house with a picket fence (which is half gone thanks to his new dog chasing a squirrel).

His brother’s even met someone: a descendent of one of the Men of Letters who isn’t in the hunting business per se, but is one hell of a researcher and if those kids are going to make some nerd babies one day, well Dean wouldn’t be surprised if it came out a Robert or a Roberta. (“It could be a Bobbi with an I,” Cas tells him).

They meet up occasionally, but talk on the phone a lot more, and Dean’s surprised he’s memorized the numbers by now after all these years of changing burner phones every three weeks. Now it’s just him and Cas in the bunker.

The two of them wear rings, though nothing’s legal because their names shouldn’t be on _any_ system, and the ceremony was short cause even though there is still an active hunting community taking over where they left off, demons _still_ suck and even when Dean does a special order of pies with two model grooms sitting on the top, he _still_ doesn’t get to eat any.

It’s during these times of peace that leads to Cas, one night while crawling into bed with Dean, saying: “I would like to consider the possibility of us having children.”

And Dean responds, “Does that mean we’re not using the condom tonight?”

But now the pair are sitting in the living room, filling out the paper work and discussing truths and half lies and contingency plans because answering _I gripped him tight and raised him from perdition_ in response to how they met doesn’t seem like a good idea—at least, according to Sam it isn’t. They bother Charlie into making them actual live beings in the government’s eyes and it takes them a while to figure out a name. Dean immediately refuses the moment Charlie offers “Dean Smith”, shuddering at the age-old memory of Zachariah. And so it’s Dean and Casper Campbell who fill out the forms and a few weeks after, they’re visiting the social worker and Dean’s sweating enough to flood the town.

With his luck, he might inadvertently flood the town anyway.

Cas grabs onto his hand as they enter the building and with one adoring look at his partner, Dean thinks maybe Cas’s nervously bitten and incredibly chapped lips could probably prevent that natural disaster from happening. He kinda likes the idea of the two of them keeping the other from destroying the world anyway.

“So how did you two meet?” The social worker asks as she leads them from the main foyer to her office. She’s a little too cheery for Dean’s liking; years of paranoia ringing every alarm in his head, but Cas seems fine with her.

“We, ah, met at a coffee shop,” Dean says, thinking about Kevin’s input. Sam had suggested college, but retracted the statement after their group tried to formulate a fake school background, only to realize that not only did Dean _not_ know what actually occurred in college outside of what he’s seen from his cases and from porn, but Cas was even more oblivious to the whole ordeal.

“I had arrived one late evening when Dean served me coffee. I had forgotten my phone there and Dean used his free time to find me the next day to return it,” adds Cas.

The social worker nods approvingly, flashing a bright smile. “So it was love at first sight?”

Dean thinks about how the first time he saw Cas, he stabbed the guy with a knife; he nods. “Somethin’ like that.”

They eventually reach the office, the social worker inviting Dean and Cas to sit down. She continues to ask about themselves, with Cas supplying that he teaches English at a local high school and Dean, a mechanic. Unlike everything else they’d fed her, this is true. The pair had wanted to raise a baby with hard earned money instead of spending the rest of their lives stealing and hustling.

They’re lucky they still had friends whose names and occupations are legal, because saying that Dean Winchester’s not technically a dead serial killer, but a total badass in terms of Hell and Purgatory isn’t something that would classify him as a suitable parent for any normal environment.

Kevin was a reference, a former high school—now graduating college—student who needed Cas to tutor him in English (really, it was Enochian). Jody was another reference, saying that Dean used to work at Singer’s garage (she admitted later to them she’d only ever seen him work on his impala). Really, it was mostly legitimate information piled over fake information that made everything even more legitimized.

“Well everything looks in order,” says the social worker some time later. She reorganizes the papers on her lap before standing up. “From what I see, everything here looks in tip top shape. We’ll be giving you a call within the next two weeks, and then go on from there.”

Upon exiting the building, Dean swears up and down that preventing the apocalypse has never seemed easier.

* * *

They once saved an old lady from her husband’s ghost haunting near the neighbourhood that Sam lives in, so she agrees to let them use her address for the process while she goes visit all her grandkids across state. Thankfully Cas knows how to operate the coffee machine when Dean asks the social worker if she’d like some, only to realize he doesn’t know how to work the damn thing.

These meetings happen so often and everything’s a rush. The next thing they know, they’re sitting at the adoption agency again, with the social worker telling them, as she passes them the papers, that someone’s paid interest in their file.

The sight of Cas’s gummy smile is addicting, but Dean has to snap out of it long enough to pay any attention the paper in his hands. He looks down, reading the name of the woman giving up her unborn child and the rest of her information.

“That’s great,” he says.

“No,” says Cas.

Both Dean and the social worker turns to Cas, two pairs of eyes widening at the— _holy crap_ , he’s not joking—man. But before the woman could say anything, Dean forces a nervous laugh.

“Hahaha, Cas, _honey_ , now’s not the time for one of your jokes.”

“I’m not joking, Dean.”

Which really, is enough to pull out the social worker’s eyeballs, because there’s no way her eyes could get any wider than this. Instead, it pulls out a squeak that Dean hasn’t heard from his throat since he was overcoming the last few stages of puberty. 

“Dude, it’s not a supermarket,” Dean says, which _shit_ , being himself is definitely what Sam warned him against. He could feel the glare coming on from the social worker, who hastily collects the files from both Cas and Dean.

“Well, I see that you two have some things to talk about before we can proceed.”

“We’ll give you a call,” Dean says embarrassingly. And that was that; they were quickly ushered out of the building.

“Cas, what the hell was that?” Dean demands before they reach the car. A fucking Honda Civic because Kevin thought an impala wasn’t family-friendly, to which Dean had retorted he and Sam were raised in his baby and they turned out just fine, fuck you very much. Charlie had choked into her beer.

Cas doesn’t say much, just opens the passenger door and climbs into the car, in deep thought. Dean continues to yell at his partner, before softening his tone and pleads for an answer, willing to accept that maybe Cas isn’t ready for fatherhood after all, and that it would be okay, baby or no baby.

Finally, later that night, Cas admits: “that wasn’t our baby.”

It’s the only explanation Dean gets.

* * *

They go to Charlie, who decides to selectively pick out potential candidates and work her magic so that they were wired to choose Cas and Dean for their next appointment with the social worker – Dean can sense the woman’s reluctance over the phone to accept the Campbells back into the registry.

It’s practically a family meeting, with Kevin and Sam watching the computer monitor too while Charlie went through the families giving their children up for adoption. Even they were perplexed by Cas’s insistent _no’s_ that came just about every single time Charlie popped up a file.

Dean isn’t sure if it’s a gender thing or a racial thing, but after some carefully dissected questions, Cas just seems to be pro baby for any baby. He had objected teens, which had Dean sigh a relief cause he doesn’t think he can handle a nearly grown child, but that still doesn’t explain why his husband’s been ruling out babies.

It takes a while, and he’s sure that Kevin went to the kitchen to microwave some popcorn, but finally, _finally_ , there’s a woman named Maggie who’s six months pregnant, pro-gay, and lives just a town over to which Cas says:

“Yes.”

Charlie works her magic and wipes the sweat off her brow.

Everybody cheers.

* * *

The social worker is obviously surprised that someone has chosen Dean and Cas so quickly since their previous meeting, and Maggie, bless her, doesn’t remember selecting their file but is willing to meet with them anyway. She’s charmed by Dean’s hard working life and how he practically raised his brother, striving for the best for his family, and wipes a tear when she learns about Cas’s rebellion towards his family for love and hope and the greater good, emphasis on his love for his new family and for the _honey bees_. It’s the most honest interview they’ve had in months.

Following that, they set up weekly appointments with Maggie, going to Lamaze classes and ultrasounds with her and inviting her to barbecues, all of which make Dean’s chest _flutter_ more than all the angel wings he’s heard in his entire life.  His heart all but flies away when Maggie’s water breaks one afternoon in the middle of his kitchen, and Dean _knows_ he’s ready, even if it’s earlier than expected. Turning to Cas though, he sees the familiar widened, unaccepting eyes, and his smile drops.

“No,” escapes from the former angel.

Luckily, everyone’s too focused on Maggie to hear, so Dean quickly shakes the panic out of his system, enough to say: “Sam, I need you to drive Maggie to the hospital.”

Sam looks at him incredulously. “What? Dean, you—”

He pulls his younger brother in close. “The impala isn’t great for a pregnant woman, Sammy. It’s too messy,” Dean lies, pushing the keys to the Honda Civic into Sam’s hands. Sam looks down at Dean, and then at Cas who stands there, still, and nods.

Dean’s not sure what Sam’s told Maggie, but as they walk away with the rest of their party, he hopes that she understands. Then, turning to Cas, he says, “You can’t do this, man. You can’t back out.”

“Dean…”

“You can’t leave that poor girl. _I_ can’t leave that baby. I…” He gulps and his voice cracks when he pleads. “You—we—I really want this, Cas.”

“But the baby…”

“What about the baby?” Dean takes a step closer to the man he fell in love with, grabs onto both of Cas’s hands and pulls the older man’s attention to him. “Please tell me what’s so wrong about this?”

“The baby is a week and a day early, Dean.”

“So?”

“This is why I did not want to adopt the other children. Their due dates were not on a Thursday. I do not want any children born on any other day.”

Dean shakes his head and squints his eyes at Cas. “What the frig are you talking about, Cas? What’s so special about Thursdays?”

“It was my day!” Cas shouts, pulling his arms away from Dean. “When I was an angel, when I was _Castiel_ , I was the Angel of Thursdays. I protected every child born on my day. I may not be an angel anymore, Dean, but it is _still_ my day to watch over, and I cannot fathom the idea of raising a baby who was born on any other day.”

Dean frowns, taking a step forward, bent on pulling Cas back to him. Instead, he reaches his arm out, waiting for Cas to accept his hand. His tightened brows remain, more through anguish than anger. Patiently, he waits for Cas.

“To hell with that,” he says sternly. “I was born on a Wednesday and I turned out …Well I’m alive, aren’t I?”

“But—”

“Look. I know I don’t have much experience in the parent department, and yours isn’t any better, but I know we’re supposed to worry for our kids and what we can’t protect them from. We can try and wrap them in bubble wrap for as long as we can—”

Cas is about to say something about the bubble wrap, but Dean doesn’t let him.

“But sooner or later, the kid is going to grow up and learn how to deal with whatever shit he or she gets coming. And that’s okay, because it’s all part of being human, and we’re going to be the most badass parents in the universe, and Hell, not just us, _everyone_ will be there for him or her, and that kid is going to be happy.

“Would that be okay, Cas?”

Cas stares at him for what seems like forever, the same way he used to stare at Dean back when breathing, blinking and sleeping were options, when he was enthralled at the idea that the Righteous Man’s soul shone brighter than anything he’d seen in several millennia so much so that he could have lost his way in all the light. It still shines, enough to blind him even if he can’t see it, but this time, Dean’s holding out his hand for him to hold onto. He can’t get lost.  

He nods, reaching out his own hand. “Okay, Dean.” He smiles his gummy smile. “I capisce.”

Dean grins along with him. “Good. Now whaddaya say we get this show on the road and show that baby what badass dads we can be?”

Cas nods and thinks to himself: he may not overrule Thursdays anymore, but Dean’s right. He’s still pretty badass. They’ll manage this.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to leave Maggie's race and appearance vague, and also the gender of the baby vague so that it could satisfy all your headcanons, but my headcanon says ~~it's a girl that Dean's gonna name Samantha~~ they're happy regardless.


End file.
